Chef Fran Costigan is an internationally recognized culinary instructor, author, and consultant whose innovative recipes marry healthy eating with sumptuous tastes. Fran uses organic and minimally processed ingredients to make rich moist cakes, flaky piecrusts, delightful cookies and bars, creamy puddings and much more. All are white sugar, trans fat and cholesterol free, and absolutely delicious.
Fran’s new book Vegan Chocolate is a must have for your bookshelf. It’s loaded with recipes for decadent chocolate desserts such Bittersweet Chocolate Truffles (with a variety of flavor variations), a Brooklyn Blackout Layer Cake, a Sacher Torte, even chocolate Moon Pies! It’s also one of the most gorgeous cookbooks you’ll ever lay eyes on, with mouthwatering photographs from the talented Kate Lewis. Don’t believe me? Watch the book trailer!
Chic Vegan – How long have you been vegan? What prompted you to change your diet?
Fran Costigan – I’ve been vegan for about 22 years. After completing the professional program at New York Restaurant School, I was a pastry chef at a posh New York City café. I used loads of butter, milk, eggs, and white sugar to make the desserts and baked goods, and thought I was living my dream. But while my desserts were popular and the work interesting, I didn’t feel well. I left the position to try to work out why I was always feeling unwell. During that time, I read Annemarie Colbin’s Food and Healing and had my first “aha it’s the food” moment. I became a whole foods vegan overnight, shunning all sweets, and virtually felt great immediately.
CV – You’re known as The Queen of Vegan Desserts, but there was a time in your life when you shunned all sweets. Can you tell me a little about that?
FC – Not long after changing my diet, I realized that sweet treats are celebratory and an important part of a balanced life. Vegans have birthdays and anniversaries, they celebrate holidays, and they like cookies, too. I investigated the vegan desserts in the market and they were mediocre to awful. The older vegan baking books were filled with misinformation (for example, liquid and granulated sweeteners are not interchangeable, and whole wheat bread flour makes horrid cakes), and lacking in hard facts for converting. When my 14 year old son said, “Mom you can’t put a candle in a baked sweet potato and say it’s my birthday cake”, I knew I had to rethink my stance on sweets.
CV – Your Chocolate Cake to Live For has become famous in its own right. What motivated you to create the recipe?
FC – The last straw for me was when my mainstream colleagues decided that vegan and the pastry arts were antithetical, so I hit the stores for ingredients and sequestered myself in my kitchen (I called it my “lab”). I learned all I could about the properties of natural ingredients, feeling certain that if I could link animal-free ingredients with true pastry technique, I’d get what I was after. While I was madly testing, I enrolled in the Natural Gourmet Institute Chef’s Training Program and worked as a pastry chef in a vegetarian restaurant.
CV – Congratulations on your gorgeous new book Vegan Chocolate. What inspired you to write it?
FC – In over 20 years of teaching, one of the basic questions I get is (aside from the protein question), can I eat chocolate and be vegan, cause chocolate makes everything better!! My answer: Yes and Yes! I had to write the book.
CV – You run a weeklong Vegan Baking Boot Camp Intensive® at the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City a few times a year. What can a student who enrolls expect to experience?
FC – Full on practice and theory. Day one is a lecture demo and ingredient identification. The other 4 days are 2 lessons per day, hands-on. People who are brand new to the kitchen and pros work happily side by side, and from across the US and Canada and all over the world for that matter.
CV – A lot of people tell me that they like to cook but they can’t bake. What would your advice to them be?
FC – Baking is more precise than cooking as measurements, oven temperature, pan size, and such really matter to the result. But, baking is not at all difficult if you pay attention to “the rules”. And I have precise advice in More Great Good Dairy-Free Desserts (Book Pub Co) and Fran’s Rules in Vegan Chocolate.
CV – Do you have any tips for fixing baking disasters?
FC – Don’t apologize. Cake breaks: Make a trifle. Use Crumbs for tart crusts. I have troubleshooting tips in every chapter of Vegan Chocolate.
CV – What do you typically eat in the span of a day?
FC – I eat a very clean, simple whole foods plant based diet. Breakfast might be a green smoothie with chia or hemp or fully loaded oatmeal. I have a huge salad for lunch, with beans, or nooch and avocado. Dinner- depends. I love soups and stews. Mushrooms! Greens!!
CV – Do you have a favorite dessert?
FC – I cannot pick one favorite dessert!! I still am partial to the Chocolate Cake to Live For. I love simple Almost Instant Chocolate Pudding and the new Coconut Milk Black Rice Pudding, Hazlenut Spread and Sacher Torte, Peanut Butter and Jam Fudge Swirl Ice Cream and Chocolate Ice Cream Shell.
CV – What vegan product could you not live without?
FC – Ethical high percentage chocolate. 72%,
Vegan Chocolate photos by Kate Lewis.
Great interview Dianne! Fran’s new book is absolutely gorgeous to look at and the recipes are easy to follow and SO good! Thanks for sharing! 🙂 Sharon